Open Vesting Tool - Unvest

[GENERAL] Summarize your solution to the problem.

Unvest is a free point-and-click vesting tool that anyone can use. Complex schedules can be built easily.

We will port our existing vesting dApp at app.unvest.io to support all native Cardano assets.

[GENERAL] Summarize your relevant experience.

Klaus has 17+ Years programming experience, developing for blockchains since 2017, and has contributed code to Uniswap, Balancer Labs, OpenZeppelin, The Sandbox and others. Kiran has 10+ Years software development experience including a YC company endorsed by Steve Wozniak.

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

What will we produce? (i.e. outputs)

A point and click vesting tool that works with any token on Cardano, fully permission-less.

The app will be free to use and self-service. Cooperation with the Unvest team will be entirely optional. Contracts are non-custodial, meaning all parties can be assured of the security and integrity of token emissions.

Why is this needed?

Currently, startups in the Cardano ecosystem are required to either write their own vesting contracts, or enter into a commercial agreement with a central entity like a Launchpad to access a proprietary vesting tool.

Projects that write their own vesting platform face increased development and audit costs, as well as potentially decreased security. They also open the door to scrutiny & distrust from their investors.

The few proprietary vesting tools that do exist are gate-kept and may not support advanced features like unlimited schedules, cliffs, instalment frequency and tradable derivatives.

What will happen as a result of this work? (i.e. outcomes)

The Cardano ecosystem will gain a key piece of token management tooling, free to all. We expect this to make the Cardano ecosystem a more developer friendly environment. Hopefully this will contribute to wider network adoption and growth.

For users, deploying custom vesting will soon be as easy and barrier-free as adding a token pair to a DEX.

[IMPACT] Please describe how your proposed solution will address the Challenge that you have submitted it in.

Vesting is a vital piece of dApp infrastructure.

An open vesting dApp provides value to both developers and to end-users. Developers get a free tool that simplifies their token launch. End-users get a consistent vesting dashboard and token claim experience across many projects - with increased trust and integrity.

[IMPACT] What are the main risks that could prevent you from delivering the project successfully and please explain how you will mitigate each risk?

We have already released our vesting tools on several EVM blockchains. The primary risk is that our team does not have as much experience building natively for Cardano.

We will be bringing on experienced Cardano developers to support the porting process and up-skill our existing team to build more on Cardano in the future.

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed plan, including timeline and key milestones for delivering your proposal.

Project Planning - Q3 2022

Deep research, testing, setting internal milestones, assigning responsibilities.

Development - Q4 2022

Rewriting solidity contracts in Haskell/Plutus and porting the web app to support Cardano wallets.

Audit, Private & Public Beta - Q1-Q2 2023

Robust testing with real and testnet assets. Bug fixes and UX improvements.

1.0 Release - Q2-Q3 2023

Release and onboarding of real projects.

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown.

$13000 - Ongoing infrastructure costs, Hosting, network fees, software & services

$4200 - Legal and administration (offline) costs

$6000 - Project management throughout the pre-launch & life cycle of the dApp

$11920 - Research, internal & external testing, QA

$32000 - Engineering hours toward smart contracts implementation and back-end

$7300 - Engineering hours toward UI/UX, front-end

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide details of the people who will work on the project.

Kiran Matthews - Protocol Design, Project Management, UX

10+ Years software industry experience. Kiran previously led the Product team at Termius, a Y Combinator startup endorsed by Steve Wozniak (co-founder of Apple). Other past clients include Apple and MasterCard.

Klaus Vidal - Lead Smart Contract Developer

Highly experienced Smart Contract Developer and blockchain security expert who has authored and audited contracts with billions in volume/TVL. Klaus also develops Prettier - a key tool used by Uniswap, Bancor, Open Zeppelin, Gnosis Protocol, Synthetix, Gelato, The Sandbox, UMA and others.

Alan Soares - Full Stack Developer (Haskell/Functional programming)

14+ Years programming experience. 2 Years experience in blockchain.

Juan Ubinatus - Full Stack & Smart Contract Developer

Sergey Stepanets - Full Stack & Smart Contract Developer

Eli Douglas - Front End Developer

[FEASIBILITY] If you are funded, will you return to Catalyst in a later round for further funding? Please explain why / why not.

We could return to Catalyst after launch if there are user requests for additional features that protocol revenue cannot yet support. This will depend on external market conditions - ideally we will self-fund after this round.

[FEASIBILITY] Are you or any member of your team working on any other proposals in this Fund9?

[FEASIBILITY] Are you or your team working on any other proposals from previous Funds?

[AUDITABILITY] Please describe what you will measure to track your project's progress, and how will you measure these?

We have experience organising our projects into logical sprints and releasing stable dApps to market.

Our measure of progress is completion of the Cardano Unvest app, then number and quality of users that have adopted the app.

[AUDITABILITY] What does success for this project look like?

Success for this project is multiple projects distributing and vesting their native tokens using the Unvest protocol.

We will leverage our contacts at partners CardStarter, Spores and GeroWallet to find projects that will benefit from our free tooling.

[AUDITABILITY] Please provide information on whether this proposal is a continuation of a previously funded project in Catalyst or an entirely new one.

This is a new proposal.